Jimmie Higgins eBook

They had old man Granitch in a hole just now, and
they must teach him a lesson, and at the same time
teach the workers their power. Lizzie would sigh,
and shake her head; for to her, old man Granitch was
not a human being, but a natural phenomenon, like
winter, or hunger. He, or some other like him,
had been the master of her fathers for generations
untold, and to try to break or even to limit his power
was like commanding the tide or the sun.

II

Events moved quickly to their culmination, justifying
the worst of Lizzie’s fears. The shops
were seething with discontent, and agitators seemed
fairly to spring out of the ground; some of them paid
by Jerry Coleman, no doubt, others taking their pay
in the form of gratification of those grudges with
which the profit-system had filled their hearts.
Noon-meetings would start up, quite spontaneously,
without any prearrangement; and presently Jimmie learned
that men were going about taking the names of all who
would agree to strike.

The matter was brought to a head by the Empire managers,
who, of course, were kept informed by their spies.
They discharged more than a score of the trouble-makers;
and when this news spread at noon-time, the whole
place burst into a flame of wrath. “Strike!
strike!” was the cry. Jimmie was one of
many who started a procession through the yards, shouting,
singing, hurling menaces at the bosses, challenging
all who proposed to return to work. Less than
one-tenth of the working force made any attempt to
do so, and for that afternoon the plant of the Empire
Machine Shops, which was supposed to be turning out
shell-casings for the Russian government, was turning
out labour-union, Socialist, and I. W. W. oratory.

Jimmie Higgins was beside himself with excitement.
He danced about and waved his cap, he shouted himself
hoarse, he almost yielded to the impulse to jump upon
a pile of lumber and make a speech himself. Presently
came Comrades Gerrity and Mary Allen, who had got wind
of the trouble, and had loaded a whole edition of
the Worker into a Ford; so Jimmie turned newsboy,
selling these papers, hundreds of them, until his
pockets were bursting with the weight of pennies and
nickels. And then he was pressed into service
running errands for those who were arranging to organize
the workers; he carried bundles of membership-cards
and application-blanks, following a man with a bull
voice and a megaphone, who shouted in several languages
the location of union headquarters, and the halls
where various foreign language meetings would be held
that evening. Evidently someone had foreseen
the breaking of this trouble, and had been at pains
to plan ahead.